Who likes Portland?

11042010

Er, me!

Yup, Portland was great. Beautiful city, very pretty (despite the rain, of which there was a lot), friendly people, and a GREAT (and I do mean great) hostel. Instead of a massive unfriendly looking building, this hostel was more like a big European-style house. This time we stayed in a dorm room, which was by far the best way to do things. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time hanging out with our dorm mates (most of them were only there for 1 night each), but we met some really awesome people just by hanging around in the common areas.

Mark and I both felt like we could live in Portland. There is so much to do there. Ironically, we didn’t ‘do’ a massive amount while we were there – we spent time with people instead. I think we’re both getting starved for contact with our regular friends, so it certainly helped things along for us both to have other people to chat to.

After resigning ourselves to a night in, an overly exuberant hostel employee talked us into going out to an old-school arcade night lock-in, at a bar called ‘Ground Kontrol’. Neither of us felt much like going out, so we were more surprised than anyone to find ourselves getting trashed on $2 beer whilst playing pinball and Mortal Kombat. We rolled home at 3am with one of our newfound friends, and proceeded to rid the hostel kitchen of much of the free food shelf. Unsurprisingly, we pissed off a young lady when we interrupted her beauty sleep. Mark’s cries of ‘get her to pull up a chair!’ were evidently unwelcome.

As for Portland itself? Yeah, I’d tap that. And by tap, I’m referring to the shitload of microbreweries they have around the place. With no sales tax either, this loveable city gets a big tick in my book.